The caseMy previous case was a Cooler Master ATC201. 10 year old, full alluminium, super light and super noisy. The Fractal Design Define Mini for me is literally a jump into the present, or maybe the future. I like the build, it's a concrete and intelligent solution but still with a decent pricetag. Just some minor cons: the black ano screws discolor easily; the hole on the tray for access to backplate may be just as sufficient for some mobo, like mine; I didn't turned the thing on yet, but the slot covers and the fan doors may be prone to some rattling noise; build quality of the fan controller is a bit flimsy.But as I said I like this case a lot, and I didn't find anything better in this price/silent/size segment.Coming from a lightweight case I definitely feel the huge difference in weight, even if my ATC was full ATX. I choose a mATX because I'm not planning to fill it with lot of drives and boards, which is basically everyone does bit apparently still buy full ATX.

i5It's a midrange 65W part of the Haswell family. I wanted to build a silent machine and 65W seems a good spot, it's the same TDP of my old E6600 Conroe before I sold it for a Q6600 (~100W) mounted on the same platform I bought in the mid 2000s (Asus P5K-E).

Macho120Terrible, just TERRIBLE instruction manual. But excellent build quality and good price.

GigabyteMinimalistic board with H87. The only accessory was a pair of good SATA cable. I choosed this board over the stock Intel and Asus, a brand I used literally for ages.Frankly I find stupid writing the features on the PCB board itself, not to mention the ULTRA DURABLE writing on the power heatsinks. Also, the heatsinks are more like CNC'd block of alluminum with no optimal surface distribution. Seems like they preferred a good shape instead for going for good cooling capability.

Ballistix VLPNot much to say, it's just RAM, but I liked the below-spec-voltage @ 1,35v and the very low profile, which is basically not taller than the DIMM retention.

FSP Aurum 600WThis PSU is not silent and I had to switch the fan with a quieter Magma. I know, it's overpowered for my system, but it's gold rated and super efficient even at low loads.Cons: vent pattern is useless; exagonal hole and grill: why?; pointless golden plastic accent (removed).

Last edited by silent_meerkat on Mon Jun 10, 2013 4:48 pm, edited 5 times in total.

1) How do you like hard drive cages? Rubber grommets were very hard/stiff in my mini, so I really had to switch from older WD Green HDD to new WD Red drive. I highly recommend it for your next, it's really quiet (IMHO silent in most builds) and it vibrates much less than Green drives. Before buying Red drive, I had to use 2.5' HDD to achieve satisfactory results.

2) What temperatures are you getting on your CPU? I'm just guessing, but I think that if you won't be overclocking you could even run it passively. I run my 3770 passively with a bit bigger HR-02 with 450 RPM fan in the back, so I guess it wouldn't be problem with your faster Fractal fan.

3) Do you control both fans via motherboard? How low can you drop your RPM of Fractal fan? I couldn't get it below 700RPM.. otherwise it was a good fan, but just too fast for me.

1) How do you like hard drive cages? Rubber grommets were very hard/stiff in my mini, so I really had to switch from older WD Green HDD to new WD Red drive. I highly recommend it for your next, it's really quiet (IMHO silent in most builds) and it vibrates much less than Green drives. Before buying Red drive, I had to use 2.5' HDD to achieve satisfactory results.

2) What temperatures are you getting on your CPU? I'm just guessing, but I think that if you won't be overclocking you could even run it passively. I run my 3770 passively with a bit bigger HR-02 with 450 RPM fan in the back, so I guess it wouldn't be problem with your faster Fractal fan.

3) Do you control both fans via motherboard? How low can you drop your RPM of Fractal fan? I couldn't get it below 700RPM.. otherwise it was a good fan, but just too fast for me.

Thanks :j

1) I'm using a pretty loud Samsung F1 750GB drive with 3-4 years on the back of the motor. It's loud and it's the motor hum is pretty audible. I don't know how much improvement I could get with suspension (I got ton of bike tubes to experiment), but a good benchmark would be a test with a modern WD Green or Red, not this noisy HD. Which is something I'm planning in the near future.

2) I think there's a very small OC margin with this CPU-mobo combo, but it's mainly a workstation so I don't even bother. In my experience temperature reads heavily depends on calibration, that's why I learned to not care much about the absolute value of temperature, but more about the delta between idle and load.SpeedFan tells me I have the core between 27-30°C. The heatsink on touch is BARELY warm, even in this hot pre-summer day.This is with case fan @ 500RPM and CPU fan @ 777RPMWith prime95's torture test, T goes up to 47°C. Case fan @1300 and CPU @1200 RPM.

3) I'm powering all the fans thru the mobo, all controlled by SpeedFan. The reason is EasyTune won't install, and Gigabyte support still has no solution for this problem. I know this is a platform with a dozen day of life on the market, but if it wasn't for SpeedFan this could have been a tragedy, at least for me. Another solution could be just using the SILENT active profile on the BIOS, but for a SPCR user it's too loud.The lowest I can go with the Fractal fans is 500RPM, and this is my base setting. Everything below that will turn them off, and with this speed you got almost zero noise.

Interestingly, my Asus board can only reduce Fractal to 700 RPM (AI Suite), must be "safety" feature to be sure fan turns on. PWM fans go much lower. I highly suggest PWM fans for future upgrades, they are much more flexible, they go down to 300 or even 280 RPM in my case. I was always buying Asus mobos just for fan control. Back when I was building PC's, Gigabyte always had too RPM aggressive fan profiles, even in quiet/silent mode. I guess that hasn't changed much..

You are getting very low temperatures, and quite high RPM's on full load, so there's a lot of room to improve, if needed

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